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How the ACA Can Improve Practice Productivity and Cash Flow

Posted Wednesday, October 9th, 2013 by Ken Bradley

By now, virtually everyone knows the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains many elements and has many big ideas such as expanding Medicaid and creating health insurance exchanges. But, did you know it will also help eliminate a significant portion of the estimated $247,500 practices spend annually on potentially unnecessary and redundant administrative tasks? By minimizing variations in business operations from payer to payer and encouraging automation, the ACA’s Administrative Simplification Rules are poised to help make a significant impact on your practice’s operations.

The ACA will ultimately help data flow more quickly and accurately between all healthcare trading partners. Much more than a typical standard, the ACA’s administrative simplification efforts will make payer interactions more provider-friendly and allow your practice to:

Lower costs by minimizing back-and-forth communications with payers.

Reduce denials by gaining a uniform understanding of payment reductions.

Your practice can strengthen its bottom line benefits by automating processes such as eligibility, ERA and EFT. In fact, one industry estimate shows the average cost of an electronic eligibility transaction is just 74 cents compared to $3.70 for a manual one. Likewise, electronic remittance and EFT is just $1.48 compared to $2.96 when handled manually.*

Still not convinced? To learn more about the additional benefits of automation for your practice, click here for a recent presentation I shared at a recent conference.